By Maria Ahmed, Simeon Brody and Amy Taylor

Boy, 15, in human rights challenge to curfew zones

The rights of children are being fundamentally breached by “curfew zones” introduced to tackle antisocial behaviour, the High Court was told yesterday.

A 15-year-old boy backed by Liberty, the human rights group, is bringing a test legal challenge with implications for some 400 zones in England and Wales.

Source: - The Times Friday 27 May 2005 page 7

Hooded top ban on teenage tearaway

A teenager was banned from wearing a hooded top for five years after terrorising a community in a campaign of violence.

Dale Carroll, 16, of Cheetham, Manchester attacked people and once attempted to cut down a CCTV lamppost with a chainsaw, Manchester magistrates court heard.

Source:- The Times Friday 27 May 2005 page 7

Mothers who kill babies ‘need treatment, not jail’

Mothers accused of killing their babies within the first year of their life should not face prosecution, the country’s leading paediatrician said yesterday.

Alan Craft, president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, said that mothers who harmed their young were disturbed and in need of help rather than imprisonment.

He called for such cases to be dealt with in the civil rather than criminal courts under the aegis of the child protection services.

Source: - The Times Friday 27 May 2005 page 25

Rise in drug use

A huge increase in cocaine use was cited yesterday for the number of people on hard drugs in England and Wales rising to a record one million.

Drug charities said the rise was because of a flood of cheap cocaine on the market.

Source: - The Times Friday 27 May 2005 page 26

Woman who fled forced marriage is feted

Jasvinder Sanghera, who fled a forced marriage and is now Asian affairs manager at the Refuge domestic violence charity was honoured at the Asian Women of Achievement Awards in London last night.

Source: - The Times Friday 27 May 2005 page 16

Pupils at academy are out of control, says Ofsted report

Pupils at the Unity academy school in Middlesbrough are “out of control” with two serious attacks on teachers in the past few weeks, it has been claimed.

Ofsted is expected to publish a report on the school today, while a government funded study suggests some state secondary school are losing up to 40 per cent of their teachers every year primarily because of poor pupil behaviour.

Source:- The Guardian Friday 27 May 2005 page 6

14,000 a month sign for work

A further 40,000 Poles and other new EU citizens came to work in Britain in the first three months of this year, bringing the total to 176,000 since accession in May last year, according to Home Office figures.

As many as a third of those signing up to the workers’ registration scheme were already working in Britain illegally and had regularised their position.

Source:- The Guardian Friday 27 May 2005 page 14

Barclays warns of soaring bad debt on cards

Barclays became the first major bank since the recession of the early 1990s to issue a warning that bad debts are growing sharply.

Source:- The Daily Telegraph Friday 27 May 2005 page 1

Public despair at big increase in anti-social behaviour

More than 90 per cent of respondents in a YouGov survey for the Telegraph believe that people show less respect for one another than they did in the past and almost as many think anti-social behaviour is increasing.

A massive majority of people blame poor parenting for the decline in standards they observe.

Source:- The Daily Telegraph Friday 27 May 2005 page 4

Violence “should be treated like contagious disease”

Violent behaviour can spread like a virus and should be treated the same as a contagious disease, according to research in the journal Science.

The researchers find that exposure to gun violence makes Chicago adolescents twice as likely to perpetrate serious violence in the following two years.
 
Source:- The Daily Telegraph Friday 27 May 2005 page 4

Tormented to death

A man was driven to suicide after being persecuted by yobs and attacked in the street, his son claimed yesterday.

Ian Kempton, 57, from Middleton, Greater Manchester, was assaulted by two men after he remonstrated with a teenager who was tampering with his disability scooter. No one came forward to identify the assailants and youths later attacked his home with stones.

Source:- Daily Mail Friday 27 May 2005 page 5

Integrate or suffer riots like LA, warns Phillips

Britain will suffer Los Angeles-style riots unless blacks and Asians integrate properly into society, Trevor Phillips warned yesterday.

The chair of the Commission for Racial Equality condemned what he called “corporate multi-culturalism” which was keeping some minorities segregated.

Source:- Daily Mail Friday 27 May 2005 page 13

Two strikes and you’re charged

The chief constable of Northumbria vowed to clear his street of drunken yobs with a “two strikes and you’re charged” policy.

Anyone caught acting drunk and disorderly more than once will be charged and the worst offenders will be named and shamed in local newspapers.

Source:- Daily Mail Friday 27 May 2005 page 18

Scottish news

Anger as second child sex offender is granted bail

Children’s campaigners have reacted angrily after a sex offender, who distributed pornography over the internet involving babies and children being raped by men and animals, was released on bail yesterday.

Euan Aitken’s release comes shortly after a separate court granted bail to Edward Waugh who raped an 11-year-old girl.

Aiken admitted using the internet to distribute images of over 700 children to paedophiles across the world.

Source:- The Scotsman Friday 27 May 2005

Welsh news

I didn’t fight with Billie-Jo, Jenkins tells trial

Sion Jenkins said that he did not fight with his foster daughter Billie Jo at his Old Bailey retrial for murder yesterday.

The prosecution allege that Jenkins battered the 13-year-old to death.

Jenkins had been convicted of her murder but the case is being retried after he appealed last year.

Source:- Western Mail Friday 27 May 2005

The questions WDA staff didn’t get answered

Managers carried out a U-turn on their initial decision to allow staff at a Welsh regeneration agency to voice their views on the forced merger with the Assembly Government it has been revealed.

Originally managers planned to allow employees at the Welsh Development Agency to air their views as part of a staff attitude survey but then changed their minds.

Source:- Western Mail Friday 27 May 2005